Dear Editor, I suspect that I am not alone in being heartily sick of ‘Noddy Book Theorists’ propounding their views on human behaviour, while living lives well away from reality.

As a former regular soldier, building site foreman, lecturer in a further education college, senior training advisor; father of four sons, grandfather of 11 and great grandfather of four, chairman of a school governing body for 38 years of a school in an area of social depravation, I feel qualified to comment.

Discipline means the control of each for the benefit of all. I have seen real hard knock sappers transformed after stays in the old military prisons, which were places to be feared.

In Worcestershire schools up until the EC abolition of codes of discipline in 1986, we had the slap in our first schools, slipper in our middle schools, cane in our high schools.

Only administered by Heads, with a senior member of staff present, parents were fully informed.

When parents were proven to have failed, Approved schools worked, so did borstals. Today’s so-called “enlightened” establishments appear to be virtual holiday camps, even bribery has been tried, to encourage savages to repent.

Christianity can, and often does, change men and women’s, boys’ and girls’ hearts and lives.